


Orpheus, Eurydice, Apollo

by Dorkangel



Series: Katabasis [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Afterlife, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and closure, Halls of Mandos, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mythology References, Orphism, Reunions, Valinor, eschatology, non-permanent death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-05 13:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17919899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorkangel/pseuds/Dorkangel
Summary: “I have come into being, and I have died, and I have come into being again. I have been blessed by Uinen of the Water, a servant of Ulmo and of Nienna. And I would tread the paths of your halls again, for the one that I love, who resides deep here.”*Fingon has neither Orpheus nor Lúthien's voice - but he will not be kept from his lover by anything, even death.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lúthien and Beren are a much better fit for the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, I know - so this fic is more of an exploration of Orphic Mysteries in Tolkien's afterlife than a direct realisation of the myth. Fingolfin is Apollo, by the way.

The first thing that Maedhros feels is freedom. 

Relief floods his system as the overwhelming pain in every part of his body simply… disappears, as though it had never been. The holy fire of the Silmaril where he had clasped it, the intense heat of the volcano burning his hair and clothes, the jarring shock of the blunt impact; even older injuries, the scars of his torment, the still-raw wounds of the Enemy’s arrows and spears, the phantom ache of his missing hand. All gone. He feels nothing. There is a bright light in his mind, but when he tries to open his eyes finds he has no eyes to open. Without vision, there are somehow stars, as breathtakingly beautiful as they had been before the rising of the sun, and void between. Without ears, there is sudden ringing silence, and deep within the silence an urgent song, like the rushing of waves and the crying of birds.

For a moment that stretches longer than his lifetime, Maedhros is sure that he has no body at all, and then quite certain that his body is made of silver glass. The sensation of flying - no longer hurtling through the dark, but merely levitating- remains, but with the sensation of something smooth and hard against his back. He shivers without meaning to.  _ It’s cold _ , he realises, the thought occurring to him without emotion and then floating away.  _ I must be lying on the ground. _

Solely on instinct, Maedhros opens his eyes, props himself up on his elbows, and scans around a dark columned hall stretching up and out on every side to eternity and shade. He brushes his hair - as long and soft as it had once been, before Thangorodrim - out of his face, and glances up at an impossibly distant ceiling, a dome laid with a mosaic of stars.

He is almost giddy with the cessation of long pain, and curious - his father’s son, in this as, unfortunately, many things, staring up at the dome and wondering what materials might be used to make it glimmer so realistically. As such, he barely registers the maia manifesting before him until it obscures his vision: she is a giant thing, taller than even him, and draped in white like a Teleri in mourning. Maedhros wonders to himself if she imitates them, or they her.

“Where is the pain?” he asks, and fancies that his words echo in the great darkness, unable to tell if they actually do, or if he even speaks aloud. 

The maia inclines her head, bird-like.

“You are dead.”

Her tone is slightly judgement.  _ You have asked the wrong question _ , she seems to say. Maedhros laughs; not the strained grumble that it had become in a broken throat - Curufin had panicked, thought he was choking, the first time he had heard it - but a real laugh, bold and loud.

“I know. I killed myself.”

With this, at least, she seems to be familiar; she bends towards him until he can see the lower part of her face out of the shadows of her headscarf, that of an elf with grey, dead skin.

“You are in the halls of the self-slain,” she tells him, voice touched with pity, though still cold. “You are to remain here for as long as it takes for you to heal.”

“And the pain?”

“Pain is not healing.”

Maedhros snorts; somehow it is amusing to be lectured by a divinity about suffering. He wishes suddenly for someone to share the irony with, someone who might share his irritation. He lies back down, observes the ceiling again.

“Where is my father?”

“He is dead, too.”

“I  _ know _ . I am  _ aware _ . It was quite the event, so everyone is so fond of telling me, frequently.”

Curufinwë Fëanáro, the only person to ever spontaneously combust upon death. He laughs again.  _ Perhaps they had to build a new hall of waiting for him. A host unto himself, as ever. _

“He is not alone.” The maia responds directly to his thoughts, which Maedhros remembers once finding rather irritating. Now he cannot remember how to block another from his mind without disappearing entirely. “He is with those who are never to be returned.”

Maedhros sighs heavily.

“May I see him?”

“You are not yet healed.”

“Your conversational skills are dire.”

So his had been, for many years; he was blunt, crude, rough-voiced and snarling, as much a horror to his elven followers as they had imagined a kinslayer to be, and an intimidating general to the edain. But he feels restored, now, freed from his body and the constraints of his life, as light and quick-witted as he had been in youth.

The maia evaporates into the air with a swirl of white cloth, and Maedhros breathes deeply.

_ The Oath _ , he realises. The pain missing from his mind.  _ That is what has gone. _

He feels tears trickle down his cheeks, and wonders, unsure, if they are born of sorrow or joy.

 

*

 

On the streets of Tirion, a smiling figure in gold stumbles unexpectedly over his graceful feet. The smile drops quite suddenly from his face, and he turns on his heel, almost colliding with the ellyth walking behind him. He doesn’t seem to care. He only throws up his hands in apology to them as he runs past, turning toward home, up the path to his father’s house and in through the door, slamming it open as he goes.

“Atar!”

“Findekáno?”

It is not his father’s voice, but his youngest brother’s; he ignores it, and races towards his chambers, only slowing when a barefoot, golden-haired figure in white steps out from his father’s study towards him. Organising the accounts, probably. Idril was raised more the crown prince than any of the rest of the house of Fingolfin, knows administration far better.

“Uncle Fingon?”

“Idril- I need to see - I need to go to-”

“Slow down.” She raises her chin, mimes breathing deeply in and out.

Fingon does not have the patience to play along.

“Maedhros is dead.” he tells her, voice stiff. “I need to… go to him. To Námo first, I suppose.”

Her fair face pales, and he wishes momentarily that he could eat his words. Talk of death, around his niece, is rarely anything but a source of pain, of fear for her mortal husband, son, grandsons. And she doesn’t understand. She remembers Maedhros, of course, but she remembers him only as an indulgent older cousin, an opportunity to see the world from the top of very broad, very tall shoulders, flaming hair endured to be used as reins - and her memories are corrupted, now, by the knowledge of what came after, of fire and blood and the long, horrific cold. 

_ Why would anybody want to see him? _

“Forgive me, Itarillë-”

“Grandfather is busy.” she states, business-like all of a sudden. “And - you aren’t Lúthien, Uncle, it’s not so simple as merely demanding entrance to the Halls.”

“I know.”

Sometime in the last hundred years between now and his death, Fingon changed the way he braided his hair. He cannot remember when.  _ I’ll change it back _ , he thinks.  _ Wear it like a king. The way it was when Maedhros last saw it. _ Tight across his scalp, so as to make room for the crown, ornate below. Sometimes he sees the same furrow of a headache in Uncle Arafinwë’s brow as he used to have in his own; the crown of a high king, in Aman as in Beleriand, is a heavy one.

“I know.” he says again. “But I have to.”

Idril shakes her head, brows low, frustrated, upset, and she sweeps past him. He watches and does not follow. 

His father, inside the study, has heard everything and has not moved. 

“Finno.” 

“Atar.”

Fingolfin had been more sympathetic to Maedhros than many in Beleriand, kind enough to see the influence of Fëanor’s madness in his sons, and to recognise his bravery, both in recovering from his torment and giving up the throne, no matter how his brothers and the followers of his house had disapproved. It was the right thing to do in a terrible situation - what an appropriate summary of Maedhros’s life - and Fingon’s father had seen that. But Fingon has never had the courage to speak to him of their relationship, to bare the precise nature of that  _ ancient friendship _ .

He presses his lips together, regarding his son with concern.

“When did he - when did it happen?”

Fingon’s brow creases.

“Now. Today.”

Fingolfin blinks in shock.

“But, who told you? How did you know?

_ Oh. _

“No one, Atar, I sensed it happen, I… just knew.” He almost winces at the phrase; his mother, so he has been told, had said much the same thing to his father when he was returned. It had been the first thing she had said, in fact, arms flung around him.  _ I felt it. I just knew. _ So much for subtlety. He squares his shoulders, instinctively defensive. “Would you have me explain myself, or should I simply continue on and ask?”

When he meets Fingolfin’s gaze, though, there is a small smile on his father’s lips.

“When have you ever needed my permission to run into the unknown to seek for Maedhros?”

Fingon relaxes marginally. They can speak of it later, then, when this is over, when Maedhros is safely returned to him.

“I was not going to ask your permission, no.”

“Then what?”

He leans against the desk, considers the old wood against his palms; it’s the same desk that Fingon remembers from his childhood, given to his father by King Ingwë as a gift for his coming of age. His mother had preserved it, kept it polished. He knows for a fact that Nerdanel had burned Fëanor’s desk, with all the depraved writings he had made before his exile inside. 

“...How, Atar?”

“Why would you assume I know?”

“Who else would know,” he asks, as lightly as he can. “O most highly favoured of the Valar to have died?”

His father seems to mull this over.

“Yes. Yes, that is true. You could ask Finrod too, I suppose, but I could not say if he would.”

Finrod, for all nobility and belovedness, is surprisingly irreligious. A consequence of his love for mortals, Fingon believes, although he has not had the heart to ask; he knew Húrin well, once, but not in the same way that Finrod had known Bëor and his descendants. Not half so close.

“So you will help me seek for him?”

The expression on his father’s face reminds Fingon suddenly of from who, precisely, he inherited his recklessness.

“Yes, yonya. Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to believe that Maedhros is the only elf to have ever killed themselves, as this seems like an unnecessary stigmatisation of suicide.
> 
> (Updates should be frequent!)


	2. Chapter 2

Fingon dresses plainly for once, no jewellery or decoration, but for the gold sewn into his hair. His robes are the deep blue of his house. His father had advised him to unweave his braids - _but then_ , Fingon had joked, _how will anybody recognise me?_ Perhaps it is vanity, that he will not even consider it. Or perhaps it is that he crossed the Helcaraxë with gold in his hair, rode out to Angband to find Maedhros with gold in his hair, fought in the Nírnaeth Arnœdiad, and died there, with gold in his hair, and blood staining the gold.

His father had ridden with him part of the way, until their horses began to shy, sensing what the riders could feel in the air too - something decidedly unwelcoming, a warning that raised hairs and shivers. It is not the same sense of tension Fingon remembers riding into the territory of the Enemy in Beleriand, the apprehension of orcs and other horrors, so much as it is… stillness that wishes with a conscious wish not to be disturbed, long grass un-waving in the calm air that he almost hesitates to step upon, for fear that it is sacrosanct. He had cautiously dismounted, though, and his father had kissed his forehead and waited until he began to walk towards the sea to turn both horses and gallop away.

Fingon has to force himself to continue taking steady steps forward. He _heard_ his father ride off, is sure that he is gone. And yet there remains the distinct sensation of being watched.

But he has been a High King, and he is accustomed to being watched. It is easy to react the way he knows well, to straighten his spine and assume an expression of cool confidence, chin raised and shoulders back. His hands itch for a sword-hilt he no longer wears, but he folds them, keeps them by his side. He is a supplicant here, not a warrior. Not even a king of anyone, really, on these shores - but then, he doubts that the authority and the self-assuredness of that position will hurt the bold case that he intends to make.

The beach is deserted by all creatures, and very small, only a few feet of black sand separating the land from the sea - so unlike the beaches of Beleriand, which had always been full of life, teeming with Falmari and with elves of all peoples so desperately full of sea-longing that they seemed like to walk straight into the waves if unrestrained. _What rocks grind to make this sand?_ Fingon wanders, and tries not to shiver at the cold grit against his bare toes. _Do they exist beyond the end of the world? Or were these beaches made ready before the days began?_

When Fingon was young, his tutor, lovingly handling a sleepy python, had explained to him that it is only natural for elves to fear snakes. _An impulse left to us by Eru to protect us_ , he had said, stroking a hand over the smooth scales. _But one that we can overcome, to see the beauty and worth in such creatures._ Fingon had shyly held the python, and been fascinated by it after a few moments of uncertainty. Then in Beleriand an Avar with only one leg had told him of having to amputate it after being bitten by such a snake - one that, had she seen it, she would have known to be afraid of.

The fear that washes over him when he sets foot in the sea of Ekkaia is primordial, utterly innate, and almost overwhelming. He does not need to question whether this is an instinct to be fought, or one to heed; Iluvátar meant for his children never to enter this water, clearly. Nevertheless, he forces himself to plant his feet, to squeeze his eyes shut for a brief second and then to open them wide, to hold his breath to slow his panicking heart.

 _I will see Maedhros again_.

Fortified by the thought, he swallows hard and speaks the words his father had told him into the clear air.

“I am a child of Eru, worshipper of Varda Elentári.” he says, projecting his voice as much as he can without shouting. He is relieved when it only wavers a little. “I would speak to you. I would ask to be granted the water of memory to drink.”

The dark sea ripples ominously around him. Something slimy brushes his leg in the water and he gasps, jerks away from it. Fingon does not look, but keeps his eyes set on the section of sea that he had addressed, and merely waits - and he does not have to wait for long. All around him, slick tendrils so dark green that they appear black rise through the water, and then a face, far larger than any elf or man, round and soft like that of a manatee, out of which peer enormous, curious, brown eyes.

It is said that Ulmo does not often deign to wear a fana. His maiar, apparently, follow him in that, and incorporate themselves only when necessary, taking features of whatever sea creature pleases them best.

Fingon remembers himself, realising he is staring at her, and quickly bows, as befits her status as one of the Ainur. Likely Maedhros and his family would do no such thing, he thinks to himself, and almost manages to smile at that thought.

“Lady Uinen,” he greets, voice low with respect.

“Findecáno Ñolofinweon,” Her voice is as soft as the rolling over the waves, and her accent is archaic, somewhere between the Fëanorian and the Vanyarin mode of speaking. “You have come a long way.”

Across Aman to visit her, yes, but also to Beleriand and back. He inclines his head in acknowledgment and does not ask which she means.

“Why?” she asks, then sinks slightly so that the bottom half of her face is submerged in the water again, hidden below her seaweed-hair.

Fingon takes a deep breath.

“I have known that to drink from Lake Lórellin is to forget. My father told me that to retain my memories in the Halls of Mandos I must drink the water of Ekkaia, and - I thought it unwise, to do so without seeking the blessing of the Valar.”

“I am not a vala.”

“No, my lady. But Lord Ulmo has been good to my family, and it is said that he is less, ah, affable, than you.”

Her laughter is silent, but visible in her eyes and in the bubbles of air that rise to the surface. She does rise again, though, to speak.

“We have not been so good to _you_ , Findecáno. We have had no chances to be. You have never sailed?”

He shakes his head.

“I fell under the Doom, my lady. I walked across the Grinding Ice to Beleriand, and then - came the short way home to Aman.”

It had been a common euphemism, among the Noldor in exile. _To take the short way home to Aman_. To die.

Uinen sighs, a seal’s whuff of quite genuine sadness, and reaches out to him, her arm scarcely breaking the surface. He does not lower his eyes to look - but he still sees, out of the corner of his eye, that her fingers are webbed.

“A pity. The Sundering Sea is so beautiful… and I would have helped you, if I could. My lord was greatly concerned with helping your brother.”

So Idril and the survivors - and the reembodied - of Gondolin have told him

“I am grateful-”

“He did not listen in the end. Where is he now? Your brother?”

Momentarily stunned, Fingon has to seek actively for words.

“He is - Turgon, Turukáno is dead, my lady.”

Her kind face creases into sorrow.

“Poor elves. Poor Noldor. Is it your brother that you wish to visit?”

A cold rush of shame flows over Fingon, and he tightens his shoulders against it; he finds he cannot breathe, as though the chill of the water has all of a sudden caught up to him, and that he wishes to curl up and away from her gaze. It is not that he had forgotten Turgon - never, not in all those years apart while he was squirrelled away in his hidden city, and not now, just as they had never forgotten Argon after their arrival in Beleriand, or Aredhel when she disappeared - but that he had not thought he would need saving, as Maedhros might. He bites his lip, and tries to think of how to explain that.

“No, he is not… He… may have had his flaws, as do we all, but he was never a bad person. Turgon surely will be released from Mandos in the end, and his wife lingers there still - I think they must be glad to see one another, and he must be at peace.”

Uinen hovers in the water, something sharply intelligent and deadly shining in the back of her pupil-less eyes.

“Then, whoever you mean to see must not be a good person. Someone who would not be released.”

The usual defensive fire of Maedhros rises up in him, but he remains silent, and she floats closer.

“A kinslayer?”

“Yes.” he admits.

A darkness comes over her face, and he feels as a minnow must feel when faced with a shark.

“A ship-burner?” she asks, and this time her voice is closer to a snarl.

“ _No_ ,” he objects. “Not that. He stood aside at Losgar - and he bitterly wished that he had done more to stop the burning, more than simply not taking part. The others - his brothers, some of them - they knew not what they did, and they wished only to be dutiful sons. They regretted the kinslaying, too.”

“And yet there were two more.”

“They were bound to an oath.” he snaps. Perhaps he speaks more fiercely than is advisable, to an ainu. But he cannot stop himself.

“I wept for the Teleri who fell on your swords at Alqualondë.” she tells him, and he winces not only to be associated with his whole people, but also to be reminded of his role in that spilling of blood; the darkness in the absence of the Trees had felt absolute, and all he had known was that there was fighting, and steel raised against him which he met, and to this day he cannot say who he killed, if anyone. “I am a maia of the rivers, also, and I felt the blood run into them from the caves of Doriath. I was there when the dead crashed from the cliffs and into the rapids at the Mouths of Sirion.”

“I was not there.” says Fingon, subdued. “It is not for me to say for certain. But I know that Maedhros - Maitimo Fëanorion, or Nelyafinwë Curufinweon, or whatever name it is you know him by - was driven by an oath he could not control, that burned like a fire in his mind, and I know he did all he could to stand against Morg- _Melkor_ , to atone for what he was made to do and to minimise the harm of it.”

Uinen regards him, long and deeply. _I will not regret what I have said_ , Fingon promises himself. _It is true._

“Why would you plead on behalf of a kinslayer?” she asks eventually. “Even an unwilling one?”

“Because I love him.”

It is a heavy confession, but one that falls easily from his tongue. There is no judgement on her face, but there is understanding, and she submerges fully - he feels her hair as it pulls across his legs towards her, and her voice seems to come to him on the wind

“You have Lúthien’s purpose, but not Lúthien’s voice.” she surmises.

The smallest of smiles graces his lips.

“Yes.”

“He is not yours to retrieve.” Fingon makes no gesture of agreement, although he had not expected any permission to return Maedhros to the living world. “But neither is it mine to keep him from you.”

She bursts out of the water, drenching him, and he gasps.

“You have come into being, and you have died, and you have come into being again, O thrice happy one,” she states, her voice full of conviction and ringing with power. “Drink, and tell the Doomsman that the servant of the Lord of Waters and the Lady of Mercy has blessed you.”

And with that she is gone, plunging into the water and far away, into the depths, so suddenly and with so much force that Fingon loses his balance and collapses into the sea.

“Thank you!” he yells, ecstatic, and only with half a lung of seawater. “Thank you!”

Forgetting about his hair, and his robes, and his dignity entirely, he ducks his head into the sea and swallows, and minds not at all that he comes up spluttering and tasting salt.

“Thank you!”

 

*

 

“Russandol?”

Maedhros turns to look over his shoulder, forming himself into a shape in the act of doing so. There are other spirits here that he has encountered, poor creatures all: survivors of the fall of Nargothrond and Gondolin, thralls of Morgoth desperate for any escape, some even that he recognises, his or his father’s followers, who could not stand to live with the weight of the kinslayings. The latter bow to him or raise their hands in greeting, but keep their distance for the most part, and the Sindar and Golodhrim sneer at him, which he well deserves. Some of the former thralls have taken to shadowing him, and, well, Maedhros tries to keep his reactions to that to himself. They do not need to tell him that they had heard whispers of a red-haired prince holding back the borders of the Enemy who had once been a captive, the same as them, and who had escaped; he has heard it in life, from escapees who managed to find their way to Himring, exhausted eyes shining out with hope from sunken faces. He is not cruel enough to turn them away, then or now.

But none of the self-slain he resides with would use a childhood nickname towards him.

“Moryo.”

Caranthir reaches up to cup the back of his head, smiling his awkward smile. The first time they had seen each other in death - the first time that Maedhros had calmed enough to be allowed to reach through the veil to them, relieved to find that his brothers had not been judged unforgivable - he had appeared younger, barely an adult, with his hair twisted into a bun and his sleeves rolled up as though he had been sculpting with their mother only a few moments before. He is not so young, now; the form he wears is the age he would have been while he was ruling Thargelion, a fringe cut into his hair in what Maedhros recognises as a Mannish style. As he was when he knew Haleth, then - but it was not only her: he always was fond of humans. Maedhros suspects that the pace at which they live, the intensity with which they feel and behave, suit his brother far more comfortably than the Elvish cultural equivalents - even for the relatively hyperactive Noldor, Caranthir is unusually quick-tempered, and Maedhros can only imagine that if Námo were to isolate him and subject him to an afterlife of quiet contemplation away from his family then he would be tearing out his hair and scaling the walls within a few days.

Caranthir is not really here - and neither is Maedhros, in fairness, his body little more than a projection of his thoughts - and colours blur and abberate at the edges of his features, but he feels solid and real enough for comfort.

“How goes the hall of the glorious dead?” he asks his younger brother, teasing, and Caranthir snorts.

“The hall of the filthy heretics, more like. But we are all fine. Someone has managed to tell Atar that you are here too - and… self-slain - and by all accounts he is doing his best to escape Mandos by the sheer force of his rage.”

Maedhros hesitates before he smiles - Caranthir clearly finds it amusing, but the concept that Fëanor has not changed is a frightening one, an undermining of everything that Maedhros would like to believe about his father, and about the changes that Morgoth’s influence had wrought upon him.

Caranthir notices the hesitation, and he shakes his head.

“He is only angry that he cannot see you. _Spirit of fire_ becomes rather literal when there is no hröa to contain the fire, but he is not… as he was, at the end. He is sorry. They say he found his way to Uncle Fingolfin and _hugged_ him.”

Still surprised at how easily the sound comes to his lips, Maedhros laughs, and his brother grins at him, sharp and fierce.

“Right?! If he weren’t already dead, I believe the shock would have been enough to kill him. I wish I could have seen it.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Maedhros wonders suddenly. “Who is taking messages between the condemned and the rest of us?”

Caranthir does not seem as perturbed at this apparent breach in security as Maedhros would have thought; he waves a dismissive hand.

“Oh, Lómion, mostly. He judges himself unforgivable no matter what anybody else has to say to him on the topic of healing, but Írissë won’t be kept from him. And apparently Atar took a shine to him when he heard him tell one of the maiar to get fu-”

His brother’s form flickers, whatever force keeping him in the Halls apparently offended by this blasphemy. Caranthir rolls his eyes.

“I’m joking. The boy is a smith, and Atar is curious.”

Maedhros smiles, and sits casually on a bench that rises from nowhere for him; Caranthir’s hand, when he reaches out to clasp it, habitually with his left, is absent the sword-wielding calluses that it ought really to have. Perhaps it is an oversight, a flaw in the construction of the fána his brother wears, or perhaps it is a deliberate rejection of the violence that once had filled their lives.

“You seem happier.” Caranthir says quietly. “Happier than the last time I saw you, anyway, and I have not heard that the time between was a bundle of joy.”

“Is that not the idea?”

He inclines his head.

“That we should be content here? Maybe it is the idea, but - some are restless, and Lómion remains a nightmare of angst.”

“Well, you are certainly happier too.”

Fairly awkwardly, he shrugs.

“There is… peace, I suppose. The Enemy cannot reach us here. Nobody is trying to invade.”

Before Maedhros can reply, there is a great disturbance. It vibrates violently through his fëa; a sonic boom, maybe, an explosion, or the reverberations of an earthquake, or a mountain crumbling down on itself, or one of the great tidal waves that he had watched drown Beleriand piece by piece.

“What was _that_?” he hisses in shock, materialising further in what he thinks to be the direction that the noise had echoed from; when he throws a look back over his shoulder, Caranthir has disappeared, presumably dissipated back to his own hall by the unknown force.

The shades of other self-slain flicker around him, mostly not quite manifesting a body but drawn, curious, to the disturbance. They all flicker away again, and Maedhros frowns slowly - he feels summoned only closer and closer to the noise, not dismissed as they seem to have been. Tiny beams of light appear on and above him, as though tesserae of the ceiling mosaic are falling away, and he raises a hand to shield his eyes, confused and alarmed and wishing for a sword.

And then, a voice he knows well calls out.

“Maedhros?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You will find on the right in Hades' halls a spring, and by it stands a ghostly cypress-tree, where the dead souls descending wash away their lives. Do not even draw nigh this spring. Further on you will find chill water flowing from the pool of Memory: over this stand guardians. They will ask you with keen mind what is your quest in the gloom of deadly Hades. They will ask you for what reason you have come. Tell them the whole truth straight out. Say: 'I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven, but of Heaven is my birth: this you know yourselves. I am parched with thirst and perishing: give me quickly chill water flowing from the pool of Memory.' Assuredly the kings of the underworld take pity on you, and will themselves give you water from the spring divine; then you, when you have drunk, traverse the holy path which other initiates and bacchants tread in glory. After that you will rule amongst the other heroes.”
> 
> "Now you have died and now you have come into being, O thrice happy one, on this same day. Tell Persephone that the Bacchic One himself released you."
> 
> \- inscriptions on Orphic gold tablets ('passports' to the underworld).


	3. Chapter 3

Fingon’s path to Mandos is unimpeded, easy, even. The pastures of Yavanna are flat and open, and he strides across them quickly - although, in polite reverence to her, he offers a brief prayer of apology to the grass on which he steps - and tries his best not to imagine Maedhros, newly returned to life, stumbling out onto these plains and blinking in the light of the sun. Fingon’s parents and younger brother had been there to greet him, when he returned; Nerdanel, he knows, would be here for Maedhros, but no other members of his family. Fingon cannot stand to think of him so alone.

It is only when he reaches the Halls of Nienna that he hesitates. His father had said that there was another way into Mandos, other than the dark, twisting, upwards route that he foggily remembers climbing; that exit had left him not far from the Halls of Nienna, and so if he carries on in this direction he will soon be going the wrong way.

He sighs, stopping to stare and consider as he fiddles with his salt-soaked hair. Nienna’s halls are half-building, half-mountain, much like those of Mandos or the Mansions of Manwë and Varda - why would the Valar ever use conventional methods of building when they can simply raise the raw materials from the earth for their structures, after all? - though hers are greyer than Mandos’s deep black, the black of long decay. They resemble a crag, stretched out over the sea, and he sees in parts of them windows of delicate stained glass - but nothing past the glass.

“Lady of mercy, take pity on me,” he mumbles, quite unthinking. He had taught Gil-Galad that prayer when he was very small; a useful prayer for a little Noldo to know in Beleriand, he had reasoned at the time, somewhat darkly.

It seems his request is taken literally. He takes a step, involuntarily, directly towards the space between the two Halls, where the a thin gap between the heights of their peaks illuminates a path through the gloom. _That can’t have been there before_ , Fingon thinks, a little indignant at it being so obvious. From any other of the Ainur he might receive amusement or annoyance for that sentiment; instead, he feels a a gentle warmth, a feeling of safety. Of compassion, he supposes.

“Thank you, my lady.” he says, instead of voicing that. The warm feeling intensifies.

He cannot help but break into a jog. As he runs, the aisles of stone on either side of him gradually widen out into a chamber of sorts, rough-hewn from stone; more than anything, it reminds him of the very borders of Nargothrond, where Finrod, ever hopeful, had always made sure to leave space to expand his network of caves. He has been told that dwarf cities are similar, though he, personally, could not judge the truth of such a statement. _Maedhros could_ , it occurs to him, _and I may ask him, soon, if I please._ The thought spurs him on faster.

Eventually, the stoneface walls begin to form something of a rugged houndstooth that, looking forward, he can see start to become columns, pillars; this, he remembers. The staircase that appears among them, though, fading from deep grey to almost white as it winds upwards, he does not recognise at all, and slows to a stop to stare at. _This is not Mandos_ , he tells himself - Mandos is a hall of shadows. _And yet_ …

Fingon looks over his shoulder, somewhat guiltily, and when he sees nothing at all following him he begins to climb the stairs. They are hard and clean-cut below his feet, untrodden, as though there have been no others stepping across them to wear them down, and the thought of that sends a shiver down his spine. If there was ever a day for transgressing, it would be now, with the blessing of Uinen - but that slight sense of sacrilege slows him in his path, and he pauses as he nears the top, until he is only just high enough to catch a glimpse of the second chamber, formed of a cave cut into the stone.

It is unlike anything that he has seen before. There is a feeling of unreality, the same as haunts the Halls of Mandos, and in a lesser form, battlefields, healing houses, razed fields torched by the Enemy. Anywhere where souls linger, distinct from their bodies. But unlike those places, sites of death, this chamber is comfortingly alive, lit through with warm orange candlelight, with distracted humming echoing softly through it from the elf sat, weaving peacefully, within it. Or maybe the many elves; he thinks at first that there are dozens of silver-haired, delicate-looking níssi working on many tapestries, brightly colourful and intricately detailed, but then changes his mind, and begins to think that there is only one nís, seated in a hall of mirrored glass of some kind. Something about her face is familiar - her bone structure, perhaps, the set of her eyes…

He leans closer curiously, and she must notice the movement, because she turns her head towards him and jumps away from her work, almost tripping over herself to stand up.

When she moves, none of her reflections move with her. Fingon steps back in shock, stumbling back down several of the steps so that she is out of sight.

“The chambers of Vairë are not yours to see,” rings a great deep voice, one that reverberates through Fingon’s very fëa, and one that he recognises very well. He spins on his heel to meet the grim face of the doomsman of the Valar - as much of it that is not draped in perpetual shadow below a heavy hood.

Fingon bows so low that his hair brushes the ground. Námo’s voice is like an earthquake, and just as final as one.

“What are you doing here, child?” he rumbles. “I gave you leave to go. You wished to go.”

Without the will to straighten his back and meet that mirthless gaze, Fingon drops to his knees.

“But I have returned.” he whispers, resolute despite his voicelessness. He swallows, hard, and fights to speak the ritual words strongly. “I have come into being, and I have died, and I have come into being again. I have been blessed by Uinen of the Water, a servant of the Lord of Waters and of the Lady of Mercy. And I would tread the paths of your halls again, for the one that I love, who resides deep here.”

He feels the wrath of the doomsman without having to look up at it, and shudders.

“You would flout the laws of death?” demands Námo.

 _I am so close_ , Fingon thinks. _I have fought too hard to give up now._

“I have long been a rebel,” he dares, “My Lord Námo.”

The shadows around him lengthen and darken, and above him there is a sound like thunder, electric energy tangible in the air with a vala’s fury. He can feel the static pressing his simple robes to his skin.

“I will not sing for you,” Fingon continues, before Námo can pass judgement. “But I am not asking for what she asked for. I wish only to see him once more. He has suffered, but I know - and I pray that you have seen - that he is not a bad person, he has never been a bad person, and - if I can comfort him - if he can comfort me - then, I _must_ see him.”

Fingon has never had the strength of telepathy, of sanwe-latya, as his grandparents’ generation - of all his family, he has only known Maglor and Artanis to really practice the art - but he closes his eyes and concentrates, and allows his fëa to extend into the air around him, for his love to encircle both Námo and himself. It is exhausting, and he can only keep it up for a few seconds.

 _I will not be turned away,_ he thinks, with all the fire that would bring Maedhros and his father to the minds of most.

And there is a shift in the air that is not pity. Námo does not weep for him, as he is said to have wept for Lúthien. But there is something else - not quite respect, but perhaps discernment. A great sense of doom fills the air, and Fingon raises his head to receive what he knows will be judgement.

“You will see him,” pronounces the doomsman, and from him the pronouncement simply _is_ ; like stone, like a mountain, unchangeable. “You will hear his voice. He will see you, hear your voice. But he will only see you for as long as he will deign to look at you, and he will not follow you from the halls of the self-slain. Those that are dead and healing may not walk among the living and the healed.”

Fingon does not pretend to understand, any more than Námo pretends to understand the silent, grateful tears that flow over his face. He raises his hands to his face, covering his eyes for a moment while he weeps; and when he looks up again, the vala, in his visible form at least, has disappeared and his way forward is free.

This time, he does not run. He walks deeper into the chamber on trembling legs, into the dark and gradually uphill, until he is almost climbing, half-blindly clinging to the ever-present columns until the ground begins to waver unstably beneath him. He bends to brush his fingers against it, and feels damp, crumbling earth, the kind from which crops and flowers arise in spring. _The kind formed of the winter’s dead_. His searching hands push down through the earth, until he reaches what feels like flint; cool stone, but thin, brittle. It is fragile here, somehow - like a veil that might be breached, like those delicate tapestries woven by Vairë and her servants.

Fingon pushes down hard, and the stone resists for only a moment before it falls, through darkness and, gradually, into light - and he pushes again, and again, until there is a gap enough that he could almost lean through.

There is movement in the dark below, and, in the second it takes his eyes to adjust, a glint of copper hair.

“Maedhros?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is the official position of this fic that Gil-Galad is the adoptive son of Fingon. No I will not explain.


	4. Chapter 4

“Fingon,” Maedhros breathes, for a moment too shocked to even react. “Am I dreaming?”

Fingon is weeping, he thinks - he is too far away to make out tears, but not too far away to recognise the intimately familiar body language, the signs of crying in his raised shoulders and his mute, tight lips - but he shakes his head and his hair waves around his shoulders, the gold in it sparkling. _There had been blood in it, the last time that I…_

Maedhros remembers finding Fingon’s body, after the Nírnaeth Arnœdiad, pushing his braids back from his closed eyes, his cold face, and he remembers the dark blood half-dried and tacky that had dulled the gold in the braids.

The memory sends a shock of cold horror through him.

“You’re dead?” he asks, and it should not be as terrible a thought as it is; Maedhros is dead, all but one of his brothers and his father and his grandparents, and many of his cousins, still, are dead, and it is not so awful as it might be save that he is unfree. But, the concept of Fingon dying, again, without him, in pain or in danger or afraid -

“No,” Fingon is saying, drawing him out of his panic. “No, no, I was returned, but I… felt it, when you died, and I had to see you, to know that you were… within my reach.”

Maedhros smiles, so much more easily and brightly than he has in centuries that Fingon audibly gasps. There are no scars tugging on his lips, none of Himring’s vicious cold to split them.

“I should have known that you would fight your way to me.”

“Anywhere in Arda,” promises Fingon, with his own victorious grin shining back now. “Or outside of it.”

He folds his arms and leans his head on all of them, seeming for all the world like a carefree young nobleman before the Darkening. There are no lines on his handsome face. No crown weighing him down.

“It is gone,” Maedhros blurts; the non-sequitur doesn’t seem to bother his love at all, and, why would it? Fingon could recite the alphabet to him and he would listen with delight. “The oath - it doesn’t hurt, it can no longer influence me.”

His lover beams even wider, and opens his mouth as though to speak, but now that the words are spilling out Maedhros cannot seem to close the dam.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he goes on, and the memories that have seemed so distant in this place, faded and blurred as though seen through fog or poorly blown glass, they all come screaming back to him, and he can even remember it all now without the oath deafeningly loud between his ears - blood on his hand, his own frenzied eyes seen reflected in the armour of the slain, his brothers falling one by one beside him. “I - Finno, the things I have done - how can you even stand to see me?”

By all rights, Fingon should recoil from him, should revile him. But he only leans closer, with that ridiculous expression of noble, defiant determination on his face - the one that Maedhros had treasured in a quiet corner of his mind to keep him going through this last, lonely century.

“It is not my right to forgive you everything,” he says, voice gentle but unyielding. “But what I can, I do. And you will always have a place by my side.”

“I love you.” Maedhros breathes.

“And I love you.” replies Fingon, instantaneously. It is not a thing they had been accustomed to saying aloud very often, in life, but it is no less true for that. “No matter the things you have done.”

When Maedhros makes a small noise of protest, Fingon shakes his head, imperious and princely as he has ever been.

“Mae, I know that you understand. Your father’s name is rightly a curse, and yet you love him still, because you know that in his darkest moments he did not rule his own mind.” He allows the smile to blossom on his face again. “Besides, you cannot possibly believe that I will care what anybody has to say about my love for you, after braving Morgoth and Námo for it both.”

Maedhros gazes up with such affection - and such relief, still, to be able to so much as see him - that Fingon could melt.

“You will have to seek out the writers of the histories, when they sail, and disillusion them.”

That quick wit of Maedhros’s youth, lost to the horrors of the oath and the deadening of his voice after Thangorodrim, comes almost as a visible light through the gloom.

“Oh?”

“They have elevated you to an ideal, as your memory fades in their minds. They forget that you ever rebelled, I think - if only they could see you, blaspheming in the very heart of Valinor.”

Fingon smirks, and preens as would a peacock, Maedhros thinks, as would any creature unable to imagine a world in which he did not shine out for all to see.

Beleriand without him had been very dark indeed.

“Not for the first time today. Nor the last, probably.”

“Incorrigible,” Maedhros says, with a laugh, and then, in a fairly good impression of Turgon, “ _Sc_ _andalous_.”

Fingon laughs as well.

“I truly do not deserve you.” Maedhros goes on, merely treasuring the sight of him; when Fingon shakes his head again, though, Maedhros does not give the chance to speak. “But I suppose you will have to prove to me that I do when I am released, if you are so determined.”

Fingon leans so far forward that he almost topples straight through the hole - _what would I happen if I did fall?_ he wonders, _would Uinen’s blessing grant me passage out?_ Safer not to test his luck, surely, although he is curious. In the moment it takes him to regain his balance he remembers what had excited him so suddenly.

“You will be released?”

Maedhros nods, though not with the lightness of being that might be expected with such a pronouncement.

“I believe so. I swore myself to the darkness everlasting, if I failed to… if I failed, and I thought for many years that that would be my fate no matter anything I tried, but - in the end, the oath was fulfilled, and it was destroyed with my body, and so there is only my conduct to keep me here.”

He bows his head, and his hair is long enough, and unbound enough, to obscure his face; his right hand brushes it out of the way, a remnant habit from before both hand and hair were amputated. His voice is quiet.

“I do not deceive myself, as to the nature of my crimes.”

“But you have held back the Enemy, too.” objects Fingon, as strongly as he had to Uinen. “And you have never willingly fought for him.”

Maedhros, somewhat to his surprise, nods firmly.

“I do not deceive myself that I have been the cruellest of creatures in Beleriand, either,” he says, although the words come slow and heavy. “Nor even the cruellest of my brothers.”

No. That title is one Fingon has heard given to Celegorm, or Curufin, though he struggles to believe it of either of them.

“If they can heal, and atone, and be forgiven, so can I.” He looks up with an expression of great resolution. “There is healing here, Finno. The pain is gone from my body and my mind, but I am  _tired_ , I am _lost_. I cannot - I do not wish to ever cause you upset, but I cannot go with you.”

And Fingon understands, quite suddenly, Námo’s words to him. This was a mission of aid, not of rescue, comes the realisation, and it is one that all others he has encountered has told him, but one that he now accepts.

“I am not Lúthien,” he says, softly. “I am not here to drag you back to life. Only to assure you that there still is a life for you, when you are ready.

“I love you.” whispers Maedhros, and he closes his eyes and turns away.

And the darkness comes rushing up to meet Fingon.

 

*

 

**Epilogue:**

 

He comes to lying on his back in the meadows of Yavanna, outside the Halls of Mandos. Námo must have had enough of him and wanted him as far out as possible.

Fingon turns to stare long at the dark monolith rising into the clear sky, and then raises himself to his feet, brushes off his knees and runs his hands through his hair. There is an urge to call out, scream his thanks or his anger or his love to the sky - but by all rights he has had a lion’s share of goodwill from the Valar today, and there is no reason that abandon that now.

Instead, he walks steadily, calmly away, schooling his face.

Likely he will not see Maedhros for many more years. Centuries, perhaps. Millenia. But he can wait that long.

 _I can wait forever, love_ , he promises the air.

As long as it takes to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a planned series exploring myths of katabases (journeys into the underworld) applied to Silmarillion characters. Next, Odysseus and Teiresias.


End file.
